Jimmy Redman

I've figured out the (current) problem with The Miz. He's too serious all the time. Any time he's talking he's either doing that deadly serious, monotone heel thing, or trying to look tough with the bug-eyed shouting. His face is expressionless. When I think back to 2009-11 when Miz was actually an effective heel, he was the exact opposite. He was animated, he was goofy, he would make jokes, he would laugh, and he'd use that annoying high-pitched voice that he mocked people with. He was still a heel, he was annoying as shit and made you want someone to fuck him the fuck up, but he was entertaining while he was doing it. Monotone Miz is boring as fuck and doesn't inspire anything but apathy. Miz TV is awful because Miz as the host is so insufferably dull. He used to at least serve a purpose as the annoying host that you wanted to get beat up by the end of the segment. Now I don't see how you could possibly care.

Jamie Noble wrestling on Raw has bumped up my interest in this show about a thousand fold.

I'm kind of surprised that it's as close as it is, to be honest. Shawn post-Rockers gets virtually nothing but disdain and criticism on this board.

I know the name is misleading, but I'm right here guys. I'm going to see what the female fans I know have to say about it.

Owens has an anglo name, speaks perfect English and isn't portrayed as French so I assume most people in the crowd wouldn't really peg him as a francophone Canadian, even though he's billed from Montreal.

If you're searching for validation MoS you came to the right place

Not that it's really relevant to a work-based discussion anyway, but Cena and Bret are not equal as draws.

Just saw a promo for Cena vs Owens for my local house show in July actually. Massively excited for that. Joe/Owens works as a match with or without the title. With Joe being such a big name coming in from outside you can run him in dream match type bouts for the time being, before he settles into chasing the title. I don't personally see Balor as "ready" to be the champ, but him winning the belt in Japan on a big special is appealing, and if Owens is moving up he'll have to drop the belt sooner rather than later.

I do, because once Cena turns heel he'll get to be "cool" (even if he's not portraying a "cool" character). You see it with basically every pushed babyface from Orton to Sheamus to Bryan to R-Truth. Once a "lame" babyface turns heel and starts cutting promos about how horrible the crowd is people rejoice that they're finally allowed to let loose. Heels are cool. Babyfaces are lame and pandering and aren't as good as workers. I sound like I'm kidding but I see these ideas expressed all the time. Add in the overwhelming relief and surprise if Cena himself turned heel, and it would be massively cheered no matter what form it took. It's something people have been dying for for years.

One thing I want to point out is that we're comparing two whole careers, and while recently Cena has been using finishers more frequently in the last couple years, he wasn't always this excessive. In fact I remember years back that it was an anti-Cena talking point that he'd hit the FU (once) and pin everyone (which I think was a thing because the FU doesn't look hurty enough).

I suppose the short answer is that I don't see it as compensating for anything. He just works in a different style. I don't think there's anything inherently inferior about what Cena does vs what Bret does. But then I'm not an execution-o-phile. To the guy that asked, I found what I wrote about Cena vs Shawn the last time I watched it. So that's my basic point. It's not no-selling as much as it is deliberately-no-longer-selling, if that makes sense. It's a conscious choice to demonstrate that Shawn's strategy worked for a time, but is no longer working, which is the catalyst for Cena to mount a comeback and start competing with Shawn, when up until that point he was being dominated.

Because, and forgive me for confusing the words here, but they can plan out anything they want in the back, he still needs to execute it in the ring. Otherwise all WWE main events and main event workers would be equal, which they clearly aren't. Plus, Savage planned out his matches, and etc and etc.

I'm not saying that Bret didn't have a character, or work it. I'm just talking about them as workers. Fundamentally, the goals they have in working a match, and the ways they go about accomplishing them, seem on the surface to be very different. Bret values execution, the physical side of working a match. He's a smooth worker, he has lots of moves in his arsenal, he prides himself on being physically tight and working a physically believable contest. Bret wrestles like wrestling is a sport. And again that's not to say that there's no room for character work in that, of course there is. If Bret wrestles like it's a sport, Cena wrestles like it's...a comic book. He's Superman, he's Captain America, fighting off all manner of Evil in the name of Good. And he works like that, where moves don't need to be executed physically perfectly as much as they need to convey the right message. Execution is the absolute last thing on Cena's mind. Take it back to the limbwork question. You can easily see Bret Hart working a match around limbwork, around injuring an arm or leg, working on it, selling it, finding ways to work around it or overcome it, and having it play into a finish. It's that physical, sporting aspect of wrestling, where you have a physical injury you have to overcome. Whereas Cena, like I said above he rarely has matches that revolve around limbwork. Because the physical, sporting struggle of the contest isn't what Cena is most concerned with. In Cena's matches the struggle is symbolic, and often internal - the idea of Never Give Up and the hero overcoming adversity to triumph. Now that's not to say that Cena COULDN'T convey this with limbwork, just like I'm not saying that Bret's matches can't convey a symbolic Good vs Evil morality either. But fundamentally they seem pretty far apart as far as approaches to wrestling go.

I will get to specifics, but one thing to note about Cena (and whether you think this is a positive, negative, curiosity or anything else is up to you) is that he doesn't often go in for limbwork, either giving or receiving. His matches are just rarely about that. Usually when they are it is a necessity based on a real life injury or something. Having said that, there are examples. Cena vs Shawn at WM23 is the most famous example, although one that is controversial as the leg sell is only in the first half of the match. A lot of people take issue with that, although I don't have a problem with it and can explain my reasons why later. It's not really the kind of performance you're looking for at all, because Cena only spends about 60 seconds in the ring, but my favourite limb selling performance of his is actually him with Bryan and Kane vs The Shield on Raw, 29/4/13. Cena has some kind of real life ankle injury, from memory, and spends the whole match selling it on the apron. It's better than I'm making it sound because Cena is fantastic on the apron, and everything he does really sells that he's injured. It's not the first thing you'd think of, but Cena does a fantastic job selling the ribs in the big LMS match vs Umaga. In fact I'd wager that in his career, more than selling an arm or leg, Cena has more often sold his ribs/back (especially vs monsters) and worked around trying and failing to lift guys up and hit the FU, before eventually doing so. And that last thing really speaks to the kind of worker Cena is, and why I think it's really weird to compare him to Bret as they're almost complete opposites as workers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bret as a worker seems to be focused on the micro, and on the physical side. He likes working tight and making moves look both smooth and believable, and in crafting matches that "make sense" move to move, matches that look good. Bret is about execution. Cena is the opposite of that, he's a macro worker. He's OTT and physically working for the cheap seats, and also works matches less as athletic contests and more as morality plays. It's big picture stuff, the triumph of good vs evil, with Cena as an eternal Superman. Execution is the last thing on Cena's mind. And it seems that more than a divide between modern WWE followers or not, it really depends on what you value more as to who you vote for: execution or symbolism.

I think if anything, for me it means that it's easier for me to say "I liked the way they sold the leg and worked around it in a way that made sense in this match between X and Y" than "I generally like it when the leg is sold and worked around in a way that makes sense, and don't like it when it isn't." For me it's impossible to come up with any kind of general criteria that would equally apply to every wrestler and match, some kind of objective standard with which to rate wrestling. I think it's impossible, we're talking about an art form, something inherently subjective. Something that works in one match, or for one wrestler, may not work for another, and there's no real list of things that universally work or are "good". That doesn't mean the end of debate or discussion or analysis, just like subjectivity doesn't mean the end of analysis of art or any other subjective medium or form of entertainment. There are always things to analyse, and ways to analyse them. It just means nobody can be proven right in the end.

I've seen lots of Cena matches. The AA seems to account for most of what he does. His portion of that triple threat match vs. Rollins from the Rumble was an example of it. How many AAs do you think Cena has hit just on PPVs in the past two years? I really hate the style. Really do. As a proportion of his total offense? A lot less than 70% I assure you. I'm tempted to find an answer for you though. There are certain matches where Cena uses or goes for a lot of AAs. And worryingly it seems to happen more frequently now. But it doesn't account for the majority of his matches. And yeah I completely understand not being able to get into a style.

When people talk about something like Cena vs Owens as "finisher spam"...what exactly is your definition of a finisher? A lot of big moves were hit in the match. Not a lot of finishers though. Cena's finishers are the AA and STF. Owens kicked out of one AA and escaped the STF once. Owens' finisher is the powerbomb. Cena kicked out of one and then lost clean to the second. There were no other finishers hit or spammed or kicked out of in the match. I mean if you have a philosophical problem with ANY finishers being kicked out of, then that's fair enough. But one each is pretty typical in modern WWE for a big match. And when I hear things like "70% of his offense" and "finisher spamming", I think of things like that Angle/Hardy match where they hit like 17 finishers in a single match. Or at least to keep it on topic, something like Cena/Rock II where they hit a lot of finishers. Not Cena/Owens. As an aside, if anything, if Cena and Owens managed to make kicking out of random, non-finishing moves look like epic finisher kickouts, then that's a testament to how "big" they made the match.

Well that's just patently untrue unless Cena vs Rock II is 100% of your sample size.

Because when he works heel in the ring he loses. Sorry I'm a little obsessed with my John Cena theory. But seriously he's already a heel to half the audience. Actually acting like a heel half the time goes against his whole character.

Got thoughts up on Cena vs Owens here on my blog. Needless to say, I had a fair bit to say on the subject. On another note, I see people ragging on Kalisto for...whatever that was, but I kind of liked it. I tend to like moments in matches that expose a wrestler's humanity, that try to remind us that wrestlers aren't omnipotent beings who always have the perfect strategy all the time. Especially in the guise of wrestlers going into a strange gimmick match and trying to adapt to new surroundings. Kalisto is a flippy do, and having been thrust into an Elimination Chamber, of all things, he decides from the outset "Well, I am the smallest dude in this crazy giant cage, in order to survive I am going to climb everything and jump off to create distance and attack dudes from the air." A good idea in theory given that his specialty is flying. BUT, once he's in there, he's trying to climb things and fly and it's just not working. He gets on top of the pod and New Day trap his leg in the roof. He tries again, and nobody in the ring is within jumping distance, and then New Day grab him again. He climbs the wall and then the roof in order to do...something, but once he's there he realises that he's stuck and can't do much of anything, except let go and topple onto everyone below. He had a strategy, it just...didn't pan out in reality. But that can happen when you put someone in as foreign an environment as putting a tiny flippy luchador into a giant cage with pods. Guys will try strange things. But they may not always work. Honestly I loved Kalisto in the Chamber. The poor goofball.

How do they not tell the announcers about Sheamus' trick with the pod? Am I the only one who noticed what happened? Fuck they botched that.

I think, as others have said already, that in real time it may have seemed like too many kickouts, but because of the result and the fact that they were shooting for this as an historic, star-making debut, they needed to go there in order to make it look sufficiently epic in hindsight. And also to make it feel sufficiently epic to everyone watching live in case they were wondering who this guy is who is beating Cena clean as a sheet.

I really liked the Kojima match from 1/05 as far as Old Man Kawada goes.

Care to elaborate a little? Curious to hear your take on it. Outside of the whole "social media ambassador" thing, I never really got it. Not to speak for C.S., but I had the same feeling. It was around WM27 when Miz was main eventing. They had that video package set to Nas at WM that chronicled his entire career from The Real World to WM main eventer, touching on all the garbage he had to get through to reach that point. It occurred to me that his was a cool redemption story, and could be used to turn him babyface in the future (at the time I thought MANY years in the future) if they played it like that. A guy overcoming all the odds, and everyone shitting all over him, to make it to the top. Plus he is a polished public speaker, good company ambassador, and outside of WWE is a likeable personality. Then he actually turned babyface about 18 months later, and it flopped because: - He turned babyface for no reason. - They didn't use his story to harness any goodwill or sympathy with the audience. - The inherent problems of the WWE midcard merry-go-round. - Miz, in wrestling, is just flat out unlikeable and couldn't find a way to come off as a face or sympathetic. - Annoying shit like trying to give him the Figure Four. Maybe I was wrong and he'd never make a face. He's just an annoying guy who's face you want to punch. Maybe they just tried it at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. I don't know.

The answer to this is Awesome Kong/Kharma, and yes it did work. In TNA's heyday (so to speak) the women were always the highest rated segments, and Kong was the highest rating woman of them all. Her WWE run was cut short for personal reasons, but she was over the minute she walked in and I'm sure was going to be successful for as long as they kept booking her as a monster. Now that I mention it, that's something that hasn't even been mentioned in this thread yet, which speaks to just how irrelevant TNA has become. The women's division was always treated decently in TNA, and at the height of their reach in terms of viewers - 2008-2010 or so - the women were almost always the highest rated segment of the shows, and really the only aspect of TNA that delivered consistent results. So there's another answer for the question of "What happens when women are put in a position to draw?"